Trends In Additive

One of the most important sites in the United States for advancing industry's understanding of additive manufacturing belongs to an institution once associated with the atomic bomb. In Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the Manufacturing Demonstation Facility (MDF) - part of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) - is using resources as sophisticated as a $1.4 billion neutron source to examine the material structure of parts produced through direct metal laser sintering, or through electron beam melting performed on the facility's own Arcam machines.

Additive manufacturing should be viewed as complementary and augmentative to traditional metalcutting rather than combative or competitive, because the benefits of employing these technologies - within the right applications - are numerous. These benefits can include time to market, cost reduction, quality (of both the design and the end product), upfront collaboration, design freedom and environmental impact.